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Who’s killing newspapers?

It is not the digital revolution that is killing newspapers, the publishers are doing a very good job all by themselves…

News Corp is ‘cutting costs’ they tell us, and the clever way to do this, it appears, is to slash the print runs leaving newsagents without papers to sell….mmm…. no sales, no income doesn’t seem to be a smart move.

Newsagents continually report that they have run out of papers by 10 am. “Even though we had zero returns for week, they still cut my supply,” one country newsagent complained. “Why would they have that silly Mr Men promotion when we don’t have enough papers to sell. It’s futile!”

Rumours abound…

The supermarkets don’t do their returns for weeks and appear to be selling lots of papers so the newsagents’ supplies are cut. When the supermarket does returns and there is a pile of returned papers so print run is cut!

The newspaper publishers have cut their circulation departments and there is no expertise left.

“I heard that if you guarantee never to return more than 10% you can nominate supply…

What experiences have you had with newspaper supply? Do your customers still want newspapers?